“I Wanna Be A Citizen” (music video)

First and foremost, Krsna and Beto got raps. Raps for days. And Ju? WOO!! Who fucking knew?

Second: I’ve never heard the original song. Guess I’m pretty out of touch with what’s happening out in the music world. When I first heard this parody joint, I thought it was their own creation. Catchy hook. Great fun effort. I liked it. When I learned that the original song is actually called “Billionaire”, I decided that I didn’t need to hear the original song to see whether this parody was better. Not hatin’ on McCoy nor Mars; I just have never wished that I was a billionaire. I have, however, wished that I was an American citizen.

The video shoot started off with a concept of going up Grizzly Peak in Berkeley and get a shot of all three of ’em rappin’ and singing their asses off with the entire Bay Area behind ’em. But the higher we went up the hills, the foggier and colder it got. We were going to turn back, as the original plan was clearly not going to work out, but something about shooting in the fog felt… cool. Free smokey foggy misty mist! We said, “FUCKIT! Let’s do this anyway.”

Julio initially drew up a crude MickeyassMouse storyboard of his ideas for the video. But as soon as we got out of the car and running around like happy idiots, hella fried, the concept devolved into… nothing. Just stop-motion-type sequences with no real meaning nor thought. It was just us shootin’ the random shit. The colder we felt (and it WAS cold… 45 degrees!), the more hurried and primitive the ideas became. After 30 minutes of shooting, my fingers were stiff solid, I was so fucking cold. Which is how we all ended up back in the car. And then, the video became about riding around in a car, four of us packed into the backseat.

Somehow, we ended up back at our apartment to complete the video. I remember there being pots and pans all of a sudden introduced into the non-storyline we had going, though I don’t know how that happened. All of a sudden, all the fellas were dancing around to polka in the living room, everyone holding kitchenware. What? Yes. Fuckit.

The video was comprised of over 3,000 different photographs; I shot over 5,000 frames in all.